I recently overheard a Journalism student bemoaning the fact that yet again he’d heard someone say that journalism isn’t dead, it’s just evolving.

It probably is an overused phrase by those in the profession or working in journalism education – but understandably so. Who wants to be working in an industry that has no future?

Initially I thought, what, you’d rather we say it’s dead? That there’s no point in your three years at university because there won’t be any jobs at the end? Well that would be encouraging wouldn’t it?

Let’s face it who doesn’t? A time to travel, explore, relax and indulge a bit… okay, make that quite a bit.

But I never thought I’d be saying this: a trip to the United States is good for your health.

Well at least it was for me and my husband.

Our initial hotel had a ‘continental breakfast’ provided as part of an additional, compulsory, daily ‘resort fee’.

It was a little bit unusual – each room was provided with a small cold bag that you filled from the buffet and then you could eat it by the pool, on the beach or your hotel balcony. We chose the latter because of the stunning views we had.

Sadly I got caught up in the hype on a recent trip to the UK – there hadn’t been much talk about it in Australia at that point but I was picking up a lot of talk via Facebook friends in the UK and once we arrived it seemed to be the talk of the town. Every town.

Usually I resist this sort of hype. I’m sure I was the last to read Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (which I loved by the way)!

But I went into one bookshop and there it was. I read the back cover and put the book down again and walked off into the shop.

I then noticed a couple of young women come in grab a copy and run – yes run – to the counter. Then another woman came in and bought a copy.

I walked over and impulsively grabbed two books. One for me, one for my sister-in-law. Well it was cheap in the UK!

I have to admit I do have a tendency to get a bit star struck. Not the celebrity kind, the astronomical ones.

From a very young age I remember staring at the night sky in total awe.

My favourite smartphone app is the Sky Map.

To me there’s nothing quite so romantic as being with the one you love and watching a meteor shower or catching sight of a ‘shooting star’, as we grew up calling them.

And watching the start of the Transit of Venus this morning I’m convinced that’s one of the reasons I am with my husband today.

A fellow journalist, he’s been writing a few stories about this event so it was no real surprise when he said we were going to pick up some solar glasses so we could look directly at the Sun and see it.